


Compromise

by wanda von dunayev (wandavon)



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Orgrimmar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-03 08:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5283971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandavon/pseuds/wanda%20von%20dunayev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War makes for strange bedfellows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromise

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the Battle for Orgrimmar against Garrosh's forces.

The fly circled Modera’s head twice before her spell caught and incinerated it with a bolt of electricity. Heat washed across her cheek, and her eyes watered. It would be a hard call to name what was worse: the buzzing or the terrible false fire. But worst of all was the smell. 

She had to be strong. Below her her forces were still dragging corpses out from under the wall, slowing with the effort. The living and the dead were the same orange-red, stained first with blood and now with that red dust that clung to everything in Durotar. Modera herself was coated in it from scalp to heels; her skin itched where the sand had seeped through her robes. At least it made her a harder target to spot.

Overhead the sun was a scourge. In the heat of the day the bodies stank worse, and already their skin was starting to swell and pucker with putrefaction. Magistrix Talornae had suggested piling them up and burning the lot, but Modera refused. “Whatever they were, they were people, and they deserve their burial rites.” _And a bonfire here will draw enemies like moths to a candle, or… well, like flies to a corpse._

Most of the bodies they were stacking were bulky, green and grey skinned and clad in heavy armor dented until it resembled bloodied scrap, but a few were more delicately built. Those ones had been wrapped in cloth and lain gently down a distance away. Occasionally Modera’s eyes strayed to them.

 _Not as many, but too many still_. She had led them in a trap down there, blind and heedless. It was supposed to be a secret infiltration, done quickly in the darkness of predawn, but for all his cruelty Hellscream was not a fool. He had clogged the passage so thickly with Kor’kron a snake could not slip through, packing them in shoulder to shoulder so that their shoulder guards clanked and grated with each move.

Modera could not recall a harder, bloodier battle. Her spells had flashed in the darkness, gleaming on the blood-washed walls, swords, heavy plate. Around her men and women had screamed and groaned and pleaded as they died: her men, Hellscream’s men. Every inch of ground was hard won, and her forces had felt the price dearly. _But not as dearly as theirs._  

When it was obvious the tunnel was lost, the Kor’kron had blown it up, collapsing the last section of pipe and a portion of the wall atop it. Orcs and men and elves had been caught in the fall, buried under ten feet of brick and soil. Now the sun was a furnace above them, and her force had been digging for seven hours without rest, tunnelling through fallen masonry and tight-packed dirt and a wall of corpses three deep to get to the other side.

Ugly work, and they were exhausted, but Modera had ignored Talornae when she had suggested a break. “Our brothers and sisters may still be alive in there,” Modera had said. It was a cruel lie, but kinder still than the truth. Either way, a side passage into the fortress that Orgrimmar had become could only be to their benefit. She must pray that Vereesa and Jaina Proudmoore had had more success getting through the back.

Talornae approached her again a few moments later. The dust on her forehead had turned to streaks of red paint from sweat, and her body sagged with weariness. She gave Modera a shaky bow. “Archmage. Ansirem Runeweaver. It’s urgent.” 

“Here?”

“An image.” Talornae wiped her forehead, smearing the dirt across it. “He says it’s important.”

“Very well.” Modera picked her way down the pile of bricks she currently teetered atop, leaning on her staff. It was nearly as battered as she was, twisted and bent in places, the gilding chipped away. A smudge of something dark had dried on one of the spikes atop it. She could not remember how that got there--if it was hers or someone else’s. 

In the shadow of Orgrimmar’s colossal walls, Ansirem’s image glowed like a star. He wavered once, broke into bars of light, then resolved. As she approached she noticed the anti-magic spheres in the area distorted his face, but he was still Archmage of the Six, and he still got through. 

“Modera.” His voice was scratchy, distant. “My scrying reports a Horde force approaching you from the east, over the river.”

She turned to look, but saw only dust and the gleam of sunlight on sand. Her eyes stung, and her head throbbed. “I see nothing. I thought Hellscream brought his warlocks inside with him.”

“Precisely.” He might have been giving her a meaningful look, but it was hard to be sure. “Look lively. It might be Vol’jin’s men. Then again, it might not.”

 _Damn_. She had been hoping to avoid direct contact with the sorcerers of the Horde ever since Jaina’s truce with Lor’themar Theron. It was part shame and part fear and part weakness, and this was not the day to put aside any of that. Her hands were still shaking with the battle-tension, her ears rang, and her stomach ached with hollowness. She could not face Aethas Sunreaver like this. 

“Do you have any further information?”

“No.” He was quiet for a space, and the poor quality of the projection hid his expression from her. “I would suggest pulling out your men.”

There were at least twenty still working in the darkness of the tunnel, plus the sentries and warders she had established around the perimeter of the area. _There are only a few more hours ahead of us_. If they left now, the Horde would punch through the little that was left of the passage and claim the glory for themselves. The magi who had died by her side this day would never be sung of, and Modera’s brutal victory would become another’s. “Half of my forces are wounded, and we have no way of moving them. They can’t go anywhere.”

“Can the others still fight?”

 _Yes. They can fight, and die_. Talornae was listening to her, intent, eyes troubled. “They are courageous and strong.”

Ansirem understood, as he always did, what she would not say. “Let’s pray it doesn't come to that. Light protect you, Modera.” 

“And you,” she said, but his image had already flickered away.

Talornae was beside her still, tense across her shoulders, but there were more of the others as well, Silver Covenant rangers and arcanists and pathstalkers, wounded men and women--the ones who could still walk, the ones waiting to die. 

“You have your orders from Archmage Proudmoore,” Modera told them all. “Keep pressing on.” She had not lied to Ansirem. There was no escape behind them over the miles of dusty wasteland, or through the crocolisk-infested rivers. If her men broke through they might be able to rendezvous with Jaina and Vereesa. Or they might be crushed between the walls and Hellscream’s warlocks.

 _I myself might still escape_. It was an empty hope, though, and she knew it. Modera was proficient in falsehoods, but she did not practice her skills on herself.

As she went to the edge of their perimeter with Talornae she comforted herself by thinking that if Aethas did kill her, Jaina would have the pretext she needed to push Varian into a proper war. Perhaps he would even occupy Orgrimmar. But it was a bitter comfort. Modera did not want war. She wanted to live. 

And there it was, faint as smoke, a shimmer of reflected light here, a ripple like a footstep through the dust. The air moved around her, and she felt breathing--or perhaps it was the ebb and flow of their magic. A good illusion spell, but not good enough to fool Modera, Archmage of the Six.

She held up a hand, open-palmed, to signify both that she saw them and that she was not going to attack. “Halt. Come no further.”

The illusion spell collapsed, and a line of warriors appeared between her and the river. Not Vol’jin’s men. Elves, hard-eyed, mounted, and armoured, a full complement of them. They looked at her with expressions ranging from mistrust to outright hatred, but no one made a move to attack.

“Look at that,” she said to Talornae. “Cousins.”

Talornae stared straight ahead, and she had gone white as curdled milk beneath the stains on her face. “These are no kin of mine, Archmage.”

Modera gave her a warning glance and said, “Who leads here?”

“I do.” The voice came from near the back of the group, and a man steped forwards. He was helmed and gauntleted, wearing black robes overlaid with light scales in the style of the magisters. For a second she thought, _He seemed taller in the Violet Citadel._ Then she saw the staff he carried, black steel chased with gold, the head of it carved into a pair of cruel, sweeping horns. Hot and cold chased each other over her skin. _This is not Aethas._

He pulled the helm off and shook his black hair free, and she knew him, she knew him. _All these years and I know him still_. The last time she had seen him he had been naked and filthy and manacled to a wall, his hair matted in ropes around is face. Yet his eyes had been coldly clear, and they had tracked her. The eyes of a captive animal that would savage her given half the chance.

His eyes were not black anymore, but otherwise he was the same as he had been fifteen years ago: dark as the hills of Gilneas and twice as fair to look on. He was looking at her in amazement, too. Mere surprise, or was he thinking, as she was, that it was like no time had passed at all since they had last met? _It would be easier if we were different_. _He is still beautiful and powerful_.

The nostalgia was stupid--dangerous. Tigers and wolves and bears were beautiful and powerful, but Modera was not about to walk up to them and attempt conversation.

“My dear old friend,” she called to him. “This is… unexpected. Will it be fight or flight this time?”

His expression transformed into something ugly. Evidently she had confirmed her reality in his mind. He swung his staff from his back in a smooth gesture and headed in her direction.

“Ah,” she murmured to Talornae, who had gone stiff by her side. “A fight.” Rommath had about two score elves with him, mages, archers and spellbreakers. Her group outnumbered his, but they were exhausted, wounded, battle-stunned. _A massacre._

“Stop right there,” she told him when he was close enough that they could speak without shouting. “That is close enough.”

“I say no.” Rommath did not stop. “I say our meeting is long, long overdue. You should never have come here.” 

“I came here to fight for the good of all people of Azeroth.” She clutched the words to her, weak and thin as a tattered blanket.

“And now your meddling is your death. Farewell, Modera. You will not be missed.”

Her body worked before her mind. With the last energy in her, fuelled mainly by anger and fear, she sucked the mana from the air and earth and formed it into a shimmering wall that spread like water between her men and Rommath’s. _And now we are trapped_. Unless they could get that passage down. 

Still, it worked. Rommath drew back, face twisting. “An apprentice’s little trick.”

“Then break it.” When he did not move, she gave an exhausted laugh. “I thought not. You never did like to fight with your peers. Only your lessers.”

“Watch your tongue.” The woman at Rommath’s side stared her down. “You should get on your knees and beg for your life.”

Rommath was straight-backed, his face expressionless now, his eyes impossible to read behind the fel glow. But she knew him well enough still to see the tension in his jaw, his hands. “Modera spends too much time kneeling as it is. Let us give her loyal knees a break, Vesara.”

“So said the kettle to the pot.” Her voice sounded small to her ears, rasping and hollow. She wet her dry lips. _If he realizes how exhausted I am, I am done_.

“The proper address for the grand magister is _Your Worship_ ,” Vesara said. “He bears the same title as your Archmage Proudmoore, and demands the same respect.”

 _He can demand what he likes, I will never respect him_. Modera ignored it all. “It has been too long,” she said. Little tremours went through her arms. _By the Void, I cannot hold this._ “Last I heard you were fleeing Dalaran through a sewer pipe. How things change, how things stay the same, no?”

His face flickered. She had touched his pride. “I did not see you, Modera. Cowering as ever. Tell me, is Jaina’s lap as comfortable as Garithos’s? I imagine the similarities are striking.”

 _Steady, steady._ A little insult here and there would break Rommath’s composure enough to ensure he could not fight properly, but pushed too far she had no doubt he would snap. “I have no wish to see you or Lord Aethas dead. This in-fighting among mages is a bitter thing for me to swallow.”

“How merciful of you. Merciful Modera.” His fingers twitched on his staff. “Would that I could say the same. But it’s only your head I want, not your men’s.” He addressed Talornae. “Magistrix, I once called you ‘sister’. A wayward sheep is still one of our flock. Turn and walk away. You see, I’m merciful, too.”

Talornae swayed but did not move. Modera’s smile tasted of ashes: triumph without pleasure. “Yes, Vereesa has spoken to us at length about your mercy.”

“She should. She still breathes. More than can be said for the elves you allowed to be slain.” He looked her up and down, his lip curling. But she saw, too, the quick movement of his eyes: assessing her shield. “I will let the apprentices and quel’dorei live if you surrender now. I will even give you a painless end.”

An unwinnable scenario for her, then. A coward, or a heartless monster. _Clever_. “They will not return the favour, I’m afraid, and then Garrosh will have many dangerous foes dead. Do not forget our enemy is within those walls."

“I promise you, I know who my enemies are. One of them is here, before me, as false as ever.”

That stung. _I was not false to you. I did what I had to do. I stayed the course, no matter how hard the path became_. Somehow, the words did not soothe her. They never had. She had gone into everything with her eyes open, and she had not recoiled. Unflinching Modera. Did seeing her own failures make her better, or worse?

She realized the seconds were passing and she had not disputed his words. She cleared her throat, and it burned, and she tasted blood. “You have no reason to love me,” she said, “and many reasons to hate me.” _Even more than I have to hate you_. “But look around you, Rommath. This is a dangerous land. I am in the heart of the Horde, deposing the Horde’s tyrant. I’ve sweated and spilt blood today. Ansirem Runeweaver alerted me to your coming, and I didn’t fall back, or attack, though I could have done either. And no one in Dalaran would have faulted me for that." 

His eyes narrowed. “Get to your point a little quicker, Archmage.”

“I am commanding nearly fifty men here. Twice your number, but three times as exhausted.” Talornae drew in a sharp breath beside her. _Yes, a risk_. She hoped it was a wise one. “More than a third of them are elves--your people, Grand Magister.” A few of his group muttered, and someone spat, but Rommath’s expression changed so subtly she could not read it. “If I held you all in such contempt, I could have had them intercept your force, and I could have escaped while they died for me. But I stayed, despite your legendary brutality, on the assumption that our shared aim counts for something, even if our past friendship doesn’t.”

“Your Worship.” Beside Rommath, Vesara was clutching her own staff so hard her knuckles whitened. “Even if we die, the bards will sing of this battle for a thousand years.”

 _No. No one will sing of how we destroyed our own victory and gave Hellscream back his power_. Her knees were weak, shaky, as if someone had replaced the bone with tin. Rommath was composed, if a little dusty, but Modera had been fighting throughout most of the morning, and she had not eaten since the night before. A meal, some water, a nap of an hour or two, and she might be in a position to fight and win. _And what of the rest? What of the people who followed me here? How many of them will die?_

But Rommath shook his head slowly. “I would rather be alive to _hear_ the songs, Magistrix,” he said wryly. When he turned to Modera, all good humour had dropped from his face. “Don’t mistake me. I wouldn’t grieve your death for half a heartbeat. I would grieve my people's.” 

“Your hatred pains and saddens me, but I will have to mourn the loss of your regard another day.” She bowed, and her back throbbed. “This is a day for action. Will we suspend our disagreements?”

There was a beat of silence in which all she could hear was the scrape of shovels far behind her, and her own heart, counting the moments. “This one as a hostage would purchase the freedom of many Sunreavers,” a golden haired magister said. 

“And we’d buy it with their blood.” Rommath lowered his staff a little. She would be unwise to read too much into that--but it _was_ something. “I was hoping I’d never have to swallow your poison words again.” He snorted, and evidently that was close enough to a laugh for his men: a few shoulders slumped, and someone tossed her hair. “I suppose that was foolish.”

 _And I was hoping you had died on Quel’Danas._ “Time is the great negotiator,” Modera said. “I’ve come to accept certain things as well.”

He approached her, his warriors a half-step behind him. _Bodyguards, more like_. The seconds were interminable. At the latest moment she decided, and she sucked the shield back into her, the mana melting back into the air and earth like dust. Rommath waited until the last of it had faded before he stood before her.

“Can you still fight?” he asked.

She could barely walk in a straight line. “Give me some time, and you will see how I can fight.”

“Time is what we don’t have. Vranesh, give her your mount. Bind her to the saddle if you must. She is coming into the city with us.” He glanced over her shoulder at the section of wall they were tunneling through. “How many of your men are dead?”

A dozen _._ And of the survivors, all were worn and battered down now, too weary to be of any use. What game had this been she was playing? She let her head loll back on her shoulders. _Twelve souls joined to the Light. I am so sorry to all of you_. 

“Twelve is an improvement for Modera’s conscience.” Rommath swept his dusty, helm-rumpled hair back from his forehead. “We should move out.”

 _Hypocrite._ She wanted to tell him that if he notched his staff with the numbers of his dead it would collapse, yet she could not. _I am bloody-handed, too_. One of the knights led a plated charger towards her--a horse, she was relieved to see. She allowed him to help her into the saddle, pretending not to notice his distaste when she leaned on his arm. 

“No need for the bindings,” she told him when she was seated--loudly, so Rommath could hear. “I am fine.”

Vranesh paled, but Rommath only snorted. Evidently he remembered that she could speak Thalassian. “We are so relieved to hear it.”

She expected Vranesh to seize the reigns, but he did not make a move towards them. “My men won’t detain you. Go, and I’ll follow.

“No,” Rommath said. The word was hard. “You will take the front. The last time I showed you my back you sank a knife in it.”

Talornae had moved beside her, and she opened her mouth angrily, but Modera reached down and touched her arm. “One of us must take the risk. I am courageous.” She made the last word a scythe. “Yes. I will lead.”

First, though, was to tend to the wounded, and to wait for her force to finish the last of the digging. Rommath sent the healers to both his and hers alike, but she noted, wearily, that he spared only a handful of his own to assist the workers. A statement. But what? _Menial work is for the Alliance? In a just future all of you will serve me?_ A statement, to be sure. And he did not look at her. It was a relief. Beneath the old pricking of guilt, she felt nothing. Only the familiar emptiness. A soothing darkness. 

When at last her workers emerged, escorted by an armed guard of blood knights, he turned to her and gestured her over with an imperious motion of his fingers. She went, briefly considering what he would look like beneath the charger’s heels. Of course in the end she did not do it. Too cautious, and too self-controlled. _My anger is silent, old friend, but never think it is less_.

“Time to prove your life's worth,” he said. 

Modera might have laughed if she were no so weary. As it was the sound came out as a grunt. She leaned forwards so she was resting her face against the hawkstrider’s sleek soft neck-feathers.

She led them through the breach into the flames that Orgrimmar had become.


End file.
